Ramadan Traditions Continue Despite Devastation From Eaton Fire

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, March 27, 2025…

• The holy month of Ramadan is a special time when Muslim families often gather together. But when the Eaton Fire destroyed the only mosque in the Altadena area, it nearly upended the community’s ability to uphold tradition.
• A bill in the state Legislature asking for more accountability from California’s homeless shelters has passed out of its first committee hearing. The proposed legislation comes after a CalMatters investigation found evidence of violence and mismanagement at shelters across the state.
• The U.S. Department of Labor is suing a Central Valley based agricultural company over a head on collision that killed seven farmworkers from Mexico in February of last year.

Altadena Mosque Was Destroyed But Ramadan Traditions Go On

The Eaton Fire destroyed Delores Abdus-Shakoor’s family home, real estate business, and Masjid Al-Taqwa, the mosque her family helped to found in the 1970s. Now, two months after the devastating blaze, Abdus-Shakoor is focused on celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (Feb. 28 to Mar. 29, 2025) with no permanent gathering spot and many families displaced.

Masjid Al-Taqwa was the first mosque in the Altadena-Pasadena area when it was founded by Black Muslims. Over the decades, it’s become known for a multicultural congregation that varies between 50 to 200 people. This Ramadan, the community is using the facilities at New Horizon School in Pasadena for their daily iftar, the meal eaten at dusk to break fast. After their Eid al-Fitr celebration at the end of the month of Ramadan, they’ll be looking for their next temporary home to hold Jummah, a weekly Friday prayer. Then they’ll be focused on rebuilding a permanent home for their mosque.

Abdus-Shakoor is one of the adults helping prepare the mosque’s children for Eid, which she calls a much-needed positive distraction. Abdus-Shakoor takes donations from the congregation to buy every child a gift. Despite the heavy losses experienced by this community, people gave enough money to continue the tradition. “This has been a blessing,” says Abdus-Shakoor.

At a recent iftar, the mosque planned another positive diversion. Children aged 2 to 14 gathered around tables full of art supplies in the outdoor cafeteria at New Horizon School. Every year, the kids paint a mural for the Eid party, and decorate paper bags for Eid gifts. The kids look forward to these iftar activities, but this year it feels even more important, says Raniyah Copeland, mom of three. She says it helps families cope with the traumatic experience of the fires. “My kids are very scarred by the experience. Whenever there’s high winds or there’s something about a fire, they’re very scared,” Copeland said.

California Considers More Homeless Shelter Oversight After CalMatters Investigation

A new state bill would add more oversight to California homeless shelters after a CalMatters investigation exposed that many taxpayer-funded facilities are plagued by violence, mismanagement and low success rates.

AB 750 from Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Democrat who represents parts of Orange and L.A. counties, passed its first committee hearing on Wednesday.  It would build on an existing state law that was supposed to add basic checks on homeless shelter safety and sanitation.

Under the new proposal, local governments would be required to perform annual inspections of taxpayer-funded shelters, and cities and counties could lose state funding if they fail to correct code violations or keep neglecting to file mandatory reports. Shelter operators would also have to do more to inform residents of their rights to file complaints.

The existing state shelter law is supposed to require cities and counties to perform inspections and report to the state if they receive complaints about shelter conditions. But public records requested by CalMatters from the California Department of Housing and Community Development showed that, as of last summer, just nine of California’s more than 500 total cities and counties had filed the required reports.

Secretary Of Labor Sues Valley Company A Year After Fatal Farmworker Crash

United States Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is suing a San Joaquin Valley farming company one year after a deadly crash involving farmworkers.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. Eastern District court in Fresno accuses owners of Lion Farms, a company out of Selma, of violating rules under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA).  It alleges that a Lion Farms supervisor was aware the driver of the van carrying eight farmworkers – seven of whom died in the crash – was unlicensed and still instructed the driver to transport himself and the others from Kerman to a farm site the day of the crash, on Feb. 23, 2024.

The crash happened shortly after 6 a.m., as the eight farm workers were heading west on Avenue 7 near Road 22 in Madera County. A Chevy pickup truck crashed directly into the GMC van. The driver of that truck also died.